Bogus Money

Only a month since the rollout of retooled $20 bills meant to thwart counterfeiters, knockoffs of the colorized currency are already starting to circulate, authorities say.

The latest case is that of a Missouri woman whom federal grand jurors accused Friday of passing four fakes of the new $20 bill on Oct. 16 — exactly a week after the revamped notes were introduced nationally.

Yeah, just I passed a $200 bill today. It had Ronald Reagan on it. I chose a store in the, uhh, “backwoods” section of the county, because I knew the shopkeeper would be just delighted.

But seriously, though, I told ya so. The problem wasn’t that people would be unaware of the color change, but rather, that con men would play on the public’s vague familiarity with the new bills and pass Monopoly money to gullible cashiers.

All of this really leads to one conclusion: Perhaps when the folks at the Treasury Department embarked on their multi-million dollar consumer awareness campaign, they should have actually SHOWN people what the damn dollars looked like.